


callar y quemarse

by rain_sleet_snow



Series: on fire [1]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Bedsharing, F/M, Fake dating/relationship, Still Not Our Heroes' Most Proximate Concern, Unresolved Sexual Tension, War Going On Directly Outside
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-16
Packaged: 2018-11-14 18:14:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,089
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11213529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rain_sleet_snow/pseuds/rain_sleet_snow
Summary: Seeking medical attention for Bodhi, Cassian and Jyn's cover story raises a lot of unanswered questions between them.





	callar y quemarse

**Author's Note:**

> Sliding in under the wire for Fanfiction Fridays. We will not speak of how late I stayed up to write this or how rough-edged it is. I just really wanted to take part.

_**Callar y quemarse** es el castigo más grande que nos podemos echar encima._  
_To **burn with desire and keep quiet about it** is the greatest punishment we can inflict on ourselves._  
_-Blood Wedding, Federico García Lorca_

The room was a quiet one, heavy stone walls shielding them from sound and heat alike, and dimly lit, the terracotta red of the vaulted ceiling warm in the single low lamp. In some ways, it reminded Cassian of Saw’s catacombs - the ceilings, the dim light, the rough rock walls. But he’d spent bare hours in there, and first they’d been dirty and lived-in, dusty and full of grim life, and then they’d been collapsing. The hospital was nothing like that; it was clean and smelled strongly of bleach and the whitewash that covered the floors, doorways and six inches of wall, all around the edges of the room. Lines of luminescent paint glowed where the whitewash stopped and the terracotta began, and marked out the power points driven through the rock, feeding the machines Bodhi was hooked up to.

There was a dull thud, somewhere far away, and Jyn flinched, crossing her arms over her chest. She’d lived in Saw’s catacombs, Cassian remembered, and she’d seen them crumble.

“They won’t attack here,” Cassian said. They were standing much too far apart, separated from each other by two feet of unnecessary space, empty air. It wasn’t easy, in a room largely filled by two beds, one of them a hospital bed attached to monitors and a drip for pain relief. They were still doing it.

“We don’t know that.” Jyn’s eyes were resting on Bodhi’s feet, her face turned down and away from Cassian. For the first time in months, he wasn’t sure what she was thinking, and it made him feel uncertain, hesitant.

“The nuns pay some convincingly large bribes.” Cassian shifted his weight from foot to foot. He wasn't sure the nuns really counted as nuns any more; once, they’d been an order of women who weren’t Force-sensitive but worshipped the Force, and dedicated themselves to providing medical care, a good basic education, and food to the needy as part of that worship. Over the centuries - at least, according to the novice who had signed them in, and who had bought their story in its entirety - the emphasis on the Force had grown weaker, and after the fall of the Jedi Order, it had been tactfully elided. That - and the bribes, and the exercise of political power on behalf of local Imperial surrogates - explained how they’d managed to keep most of their lands and monetary resources, and why, despite the ongoing bombardment of Despoina, their cloisters, guesthouse and hospital remained untouched.

Cassian’s eyes followed Jyn around the room as she paced. Too tense to be anything other than defensive, she was going to give them away, unless Cassian could pass it off as concern for their alleged husband. There had already been a dangerous moment when the doctor checking on Bodhi, a woman with hooded eyes and a tired face whose name tag read Sister Kalonia, had spotted Jyn’s kyber crystal necklace glinting at the neck of the loose wraparound blouse the nuns had given Jyn while her own filthy clothes were washed. Evidently there were some true believers left in the order, though; Sister Kalonia had deliberately averted her eyes, pressed a finger to her lips, and walked away. Cassian was glad that neither of them had had to kill her; besides the purely moral considerations, if they’d done it they would have had to leave, and they had nowhere else to go.

Jyn dropped into the chair by Bodhi’s bed, frowning at his still face. Unconscious, he looked far calmer than he ever did awake, but his handsome face had nothing to animate it, and Cassian found that unexpectedly unnerving. He watched Jyn instead, the way she toyed anxiously with her necklace now that only the three of them were in the room. The limited, warmly yellow light of the single solar lamp gleamed off the crystal, and painted soft shadows and gilded highlights on Jyn’s bare forearms, the curve of her cheek, the line of her collarbone. He could see her mouthing words, and he didn’t have to guess what they were.

_I am one with the Force, and the Force is with me. I am one -_

“Kestrel,” he said, his voice carrying in the room, which was otherwise nearly silent, the quiet broken only by the monitors’ murmurings and the occasional passing footstep.

Jyn looked up sharply, dropping the crystal down the front of her blouse. Cassian tried very hard not to follow its track with his eyes, or to let his gaze catch on the tiny blue diamond on Jyn’s right thumb, a match for the one marked on his right thumb and Bodhi’s, in what Cassian hoped was extremely permanent ink.

The nuns couldn’t be caught with Force-worshippers under their roof, much less in their hospital. Still less could they be caught with three rebels in their care. Which was why, when they’d been forced to seek shelter, Cassian, Jyn and a bleeding, confused Bodhi had posed as Yannick, Kestrel and their injured husband Ashlok, a married trio of spacers caught away from their ship when the bombardment began.

Jyn came over to him, and dropped down beside him, graceless. Cassian caught his breath anyway, and when she leaned against him, he didn’t get it back.

There was a lot he wanted to say to Jyn, somewhere quiet, somewhere private. He had been largely unconscious after the escape from Scarif, and had stayed that way during the long surgeries to rebuild as much of his spine as possible. After he’d come round, and slowly become mobile again, there had been no quiet and no privacy, and the two of them had remained trapped in a halfway state between comrades and lovers, with no time to work out where they stood. Cassian’s eyes went to her whenever she entered a room; she gravitated towards him like they were a pair of circling moons in a complex orbit. They understood each other almost without words - often entirely without words.

It unnerved people. Generally, Cassian had no problem with that.

But that synchrony had broken when Cassian had said “my wife” and rested a hand on the small of Jyn’s back, and felt every muscle in her tense up. He had no idea why she had reacted like that to a cover all three of them had agreed on and discussed in advance, and it alarmed him. He was afraid of what he’d done, worried that by the time they could speak freely the damage would be irreparable. And he was furious with himself for the fact that, despite all his worries and the danger they were still in, despite Jyn’s obvious discomfort, he couldn’t stop himself noticing the warmth Jyn gave off, the way her newly cleaned hair fell about her face and her lashes curved over her cheeks when she lowered her eyes, the berry red of her mouth as she bit her lip with sharp white teeth.

And the nuns had only given them one bed, because, of course, Yannick and Kestrel had been married for several years. Cassian gathered his courage and put an arm around Jyn’s shoulders; she rested her heavy head against him.

“I was thinking,” he said, clearing his throat. “I could take the chair and sit with Ashlok.”

Jyn sat bolt upright. Cassian missed her weight against his side with a sharpness that embarrassed him. “With your back? Yannick, are you mad?”

“I thought-”

“No,” Jyn said conclusively. “I’ll sleep in the chair.”

“But you won’t sleep,” Cassian pointed out. “Kestrel, you need…”

They were staring at each other. His sentence trailed off.

“So do you,” Jyn said, quiet and rough, and it was Cassian who blinked and looked away first. He knew he was flushing red, high on his cheekbones and at the tips of his ears.

“Sister Kalonia said - there would be alarms, and a nurse to check,” he said, stumblingly. He was confident Bodhi would be all right, now they weren’t trying to treat him on the run with a field kit. The nuns might have dodgy principles as a corporate body, but he’d been watching them like a hawk, and they were competent medical professionals with high-quality droid assistance. “We don’t - we can sit up with Ashlok, but we came here so we wouldn't need to, so somebody who knows what they’re doing can take care of him.”

“I’m worried about that head wound,” Jyn admitted.

“Hard not to be,” Cassian said. “We’re all…”

Jyn looked back at him, and Cassian had to grope for words. Her gaze dropped to his mouth as he voiced them, and she caught his eye, flushed, swallowed and looked away again.

Cassian wanted to talk to her properly so badly it burned, to get this out in the open, to put whatever remained of his soul in her hands; he was less scared of taking the risk than the consequences of never risking it. But not here, not now, not while they were both pretending to be somebody else.

“On edge,” he finished, inadequately. He wasn’t sure how long it had been since he’d stopped halfway through his sentence.

There was another dull boom, and Jyn’s entire body went rigid.

“I think we should sleep,” she said. She sounded strained, but Cassian didn’t know if it was the prospect of sharing a bed with him or the shelling outside. She got up, and trod decisively over to the solar lamp in an alcove; she turned it down to its lowest setting, just enough for someone to check on the patient, and then walked back to the bed, where she faltered and halted, looking down at Cassian.

Cassian couldn’t take his eyes from her, standing directly in front of him. His mouth had gone dry, and his hands felt like they might be trembling.

“You’re sure Ashlok will be all right?” Jyn said. He wasn’t sure if it was all she wanted to say, or if it was only part of what needed to be spoken.

He nodded. “You heard Sister Kalonia. He just needs rest.”

“Give me some room,” Jyn said, her half-hesitancy papered over with bravado.

Cassian scooted backwards on the narrow bed, pushing the blankets aside, without even thinking about it. She could have told him to do anything in that tone of voice, and it would be done before the sentence had fully left her mouth.

Jyn climbed in beside him, and pulled the blankets up, lying down on her side next to him. Her eyes were very large, turned to slate-grey by the shadows, and her lower lip was a little swollen where she’d been chewing on it anxiously. His heart rate did something interesting, and he settled himself on the bed next to her.

His breath was too fast and too uneven for calmness. They stared at each other, something caught between them, for several long seconds, and then Jyn leaned forward and kissed him, soft and close-mouthed and a little too lingering to be merely friendly.

Cassian’s heart and breath alike nearly stopped. He wanted to lean into the kiss, chase the ,taste of her as far as she wanted him to go, cup her jaw in his hand and slide his fingers into her hair, press close and gather her against him, melt into her warmth and strength. But by the time he’d managed to collect enough brain to think this, Jyn had retreated, and was staring at him again, with an expression Cassian still couldn’t read.

  
“Good night,” she said unevenly, reddening, and then turned onto her other side, pulling the blanket up over her shoulders like she wanted to hide.

Cassian echoed her, hearing his shock coming through far too clearly in his own voice.

Jyn’s shoulders hunched a little. It took them a while to relax.

Cassian lay awake for long after Jyn’s breathing had evened out and softened, watching the dim glow of the lamp and the luminous corners of the hospital room, the blinking lights of Bodhi’s machines. He could still feel the last shadow of her lips on his, and the warmth of her, centimetres away, so close he could reach out and touch her if he dared - so close it was hard to avoid touching her.

It took him a very long time to fall asleep.


End file.
